Friday, September 14, 2012

Review: Revlon Brilliant Strength Nail Enamels

I found these new Revlon Brilliant Strength Nail Enamels in my local Wal-Mart here in Canada. There were a wide range of shades with different finishes. The ones I was most interested in were actually the cream shades, but there weren't many fall colours with that a cream finish. :(They were $5.96 each with 0.4 Fl.Oz/11.7ml which to me seems like a fair price for how great these work. I got a couple of them and love every single one of them in terms of colour, finish, and application! Before I get to the pictures I want to say I'm sorry I couldn't show you guys all the colour swatches on my nails it would have taken too long and dried up my poor cuticles. ): I did go ahead and do 3 of them before I started doing them on plastic wheels.These are the fall colours that I picked:

All of these fall colours have a metallic finish except for Dominate which is a cream. The camera doesn't do Beguile justice. This shade has multi dimensional fine glitters that look teal/purple/blue as you rotate the nail or bottle.

As I was putting these two polishes on I couldn't help but notice they seemed familiar so here are the Essie polishes they reminded me of for comparison. Essie's Turquoise & Caicos is a bit lighter and more blue; Tart Deco is slightly darker and more pink. To be honest, I couldn't tell the difference if they weren't side by side.

Essie polishes usually takes me at least 3 coats to make it opaque, whereas the Revlon one only takes 1 thicker coat or 2 thin coats. The Essie one also costs about twice as much depending on where you get it.

My overall thoughts about them:

Pros:

Packaging: These come with the same packaging and brush as the Revlon Colorstay Longwear Nail Enamels. The brush is wide and flat with curved edges which makes application super easy even with your non-dominant hand. It also stores nicely unlike the regular Revlon nail polishes that have the wider base.

Application: Smooth formulation that gave an opaque finish in 1-2 coats.

Colour payoff: True to the bottle. What you see is what you get.

Price: Average for drugstore nail polishes, but great for what the product is. Allows you to try a larger variety of colours. Uses less product to achieve the look.

Cons:

Colour selection: Good selection of colours however different stores will vary in the colours they carry. I wish they had more cream finish darker neutral tones.

Wear: Like most nail polishes (on me) I started seeing tip wear at the end of the 2nd day and minor chipping on the 3rd.

Streaking: Some of the metallic shades do streak slightly

Personally, the cons don't bother me. I love the colours that I bought and how these polishes apply and since I change my polish colour pretty often it doesn't bother me that it doesn't last on the nails for weeks. My favorites are Provoke, Dominate and Beguile.

Have you guys seen them in your stores? What's your favourite colour of the collection?